Chapter VIII - Healing the Sick
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and death, we do not govern our bodies; we must
and death, we do not govern our bodies; we must
turn to spiritual sense for happiness and immortality.
Thinking less of what we term substance-matter, and
more of substance in Spirit, we become a law to our
bodies of Life, and not death, of harmony instead of
discord, and of Truth instead of error.
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I pity him more who is sick than him who is a sinner,
I pity him more who is sick than him who is a sinner,
for we rely on God to help man in the latter, but not
the former case. If sense masters man in sickness, it
may in sin, and Soul is out of office. Because personal
sense reports you poor, it may tempt you to steal; or
exposed to fatigue, or cold, say you must be sick; but
should you believe it in one case more than in the other?
in both cases it misguides and deludes. The belief that
sickness is a necessity, or the master of man, disappears
in science where our normal control over the body
reappears. Bathing, friction, dietetics, air, exercise, elec-
tricity, etc., never yet made man harmonious; drug-
ging or pounding the poor body to make it sensibly feel
well, that ought to be insensibly well, is a sorry equiv-
alent for the control of Spirit over matter. Has brains,
blood, heart, lungs, stomach, bones, nerves, drugs, whis-
key or sin, reduced thee to the slave of matter; remem-
ber these are not as strong as thou, and rise to thy
God-given dominion; man is not the tool of personal
sense, the Truth of being declares this. Sickness, as
well as sin, is error, and can matter err? Sickness is a
jar, an abnormal action, inharmonious, and what is the
corrective of this? matter cannot resuscitate, without
mind, it cannot act of itself. We say it can; that cer-
tain combinations, gasses, secretions, acute or morbid
conditions of matter produce inharmony, and bodily
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sufferings also; but this is not so, if the body causes
sufferings also; but this is not so, if the body causes
pain it can also cure it, but matter neither caused nor
cured disease; not a gas accumulates, or a secretion
takes place, or a combination occurs without mind.
We admit the voluntary action of mind controls muscles,
bones and nerves, but conclude, when these please to
rebel against mind, as in case of lameness or contrac-
tion, they will not obey, however much we desire it,
and mind has no more control over them; but this
makes muscles and bones superior to man in one in-
stance, and in another his servant, which is unnatural
and not equal to the economy of human governments.
If muscles are capable of action without the mind, we
might say they are capable of inaction also, on this
same premises, but not otherwise; and if they are able
to inact of themselves at any time, they are at all times,
and man has no control over them, and one state is as
much their normal condition as the other; hence a stiff-
ened joint or paralyzed limb is as natural as its opposite.
But if mind controls muscles in one case, it does in all
cases. When Shakespeare said, "Throw physic to the
dogs," I have some faith he added to the cast-aways,
the belief of intelligent matter. Sometimes in fevers,
consumptions, etc., the patient seems full of courage,
and we say, "how calm he is; how can he be suffering
from fear; his body is the victim of disease, but the
mind is unmoved." Mind that in sickness we deem
tranquil, is frightened with its own images; fear heats
the insensible body and dashes the blood in mad cur-
rents; but Christ, Truth, stills this tempest, with its
"peace be still." If disease can attack and control the
body without man's consent, so can sin; both are error